A child doesn't need to be taught that violence = pain. He only need observe it once, and he knows. Sex = potential for serious consequences is not readily observable, therefore society has placed a different set of values on the approach to teaching about it.

This would be a *very* healthy attitude, save that we try to put sex ed in schools, but ironically have to cater to the values of the ignorant who have "theological" objections, because it just doesn't work that way. Case in point, just within my mothers generation is was simply **not** talked about. In fact, it was so not talked about that my mother thought she was bleeding to death when she had her first period, she pretty much had no clue about anything, and she even freaked the first time my dad tried to French kiss her. She also got married before she got out of high school, and never went on to college.

See, the problem is, the same clowns whose dangerous and absurd views on the subject we cater to, by letting them keep their kids out of the class, are also trying to gut the classes, and replace them with ones that leave **all** kids as ignorant as my mother was. Sadly, so long as parents are so indoctrinated into ignorance and focused on how they must be right, because it just seems icky and anti-Jesus to do it otherwise, then the rest of us have to a) force *real* education to happen, and b) hope that most of the parents of just as ignorant, but less stupidly ignorant, and won't notice that we are actually teaching their kids anything. If they do notice.. Sadly, they are bound to side of the loonies, on the grounds that its OK to teach A, B and C, but never D, because D is just *wrong* somehow to talk about. Sadly, that can be used to describe damn near "anything" you teach. Reading? Well, book A, B and C are OK, but, "How dare you let my kid read 'Catcher in the Rye'!?!" Name a subject, and I am sure there is "something" in it that one or both parents, of some kids, would irrationally object to, on no better grounds that what they either imagine it promotes, to if they think its "appropriate" for a girl/boy to be doing "that sort of thing". Gives me a headache sometimes just thinking about some of the blatant stupidity I have seen better parents and some school, over some of the most ludicrously silly nonsense or delusional projection of motives/imaginary consequences.

Oh, and BTW, just to clear something up. 99% of furries are just as anti-bestiality as normal people. Its play acting, or personal association with the traits of some animal species, or one of a variety of other things, none of which really have anything to do with wanting to mount a horse the wrong way. Most of them, even if they where willing to consider going beyond what they think, would reject it on the grounds that animals are not, as a rule, sufficiently sapient to be equal partners in such a relationship. That is in fact almost a direct quote of the conclusions reached by the majority on a furry news server I posted on for a while. I left mainly because almost no one posted any good art to the server and the only other thing anyone ever did was 1-2 people who constantly trolled for political discussions, in which they showed a **completely** and total lack of ability to learn anything, but just repeated the same silly assertions every time they brought some subject up. I got tired of the intellectual leftist equivalent on there or going to a right wing website. Same inability to learn, same refusal to acknowledge any point made by the other side, same sort of, "This is true.. is true.. true.. ue... e...", posting. Only difference was, on usenet, they can't just delete posts by people that don't pander to their viewpoint. lol Still, it was only one constant fool, and one guy I 90% agreed with, but liked to go all, as he called it, "Radical Deconstructionist" on me, when ever certain subjects cropped up. It just wasn't worth sticking around for the rare times someone posted good art.

In any case, of all the posters, probably 20 regulars, only two suggested that, in principle, there wasn't anything "wrong" with sleeping with animals, other than some drastically overblown odds of disease, etc. (which are probably lower than contracting one of several types of herpes doing it with a human. After all, cold sores "are" a form of herpes, and that effects like what 25% of the populous or something?), but that they wouldn't personally do it themselves either. That is kind of a far cry from the idea that furries are all closet animalphiles.

Perhaps that is why even children's shows (like many Disney movies) have death or violence and yet children seem to handle it just fine.

Well, and for decades, the "traditional" kid's hero has been Batman, Superman etc. Even the old cartoons are full of fighting, albeit less graphic than today. Sure, a few kids may not understand that it isn't acceptable to mimic, but then a few kids also try to wear capes and jump off the roof.

Precisely. The problem **is** the few that don't get the difference. In most cases, that can often be traced back to parents that don't let the kids imagine in the first place, trying to make them mini grown up, or who don't explain things, just tell them its bad, or well, I think you get the point. If you don't provide a framework to understand something, kids won't just miraculously learn to understand it. If you teach them to think about it in a way that inadvertantly, or intentionally, promotes the idea that hurting people is OK, then they are not going to just wake up one morning and suddenly think that its bad to hurt people. Not without a long internal struggle and lots of other input that suggests that their learned preconceptions are wrong. Isolation produces isolationists, who lack the knowledge and broad exposure to idea that **allow** them to form rational opinions about other people and things, let alone form well developed moral codes. This is imho, why you are more likely to find someone who spent the first 20 years of their life inside a cultish environment telling you, "If the FSM didn't exist, the first thing I would do is kill you for annoying me, then I would find some things to steal and some women to rape.", while you wouldn't *ever* find anyone else making such a statement. To anyone any with breadth of ideas, exposure to differences of opinion and who has has the chance to form a moral code, without referring "only" to some groups dogma, such a statement isn't just bizzare, its scary, irrational and one strongly wonders why the person stating it isn't in a padded room.

The problem is, we have two sort of "over protectors". One group would like to shield kids from all bad stuff, because they don't want the risk of any of them getting hurt. This is completely unrealistic, even if it is an understandable impulse. The others... Think they have an "edge" over everyone else on what the real risks are, can't or won't see that they are wrong, and are only "partially" interested in limiting risk. They are more dangerous because they are not wrong for the right reasons, they are wrong for self interested reasons, believing that somehow, by putting as many road blocks in the path of kids, to limit risks, both real and imaginary, they will ***personally*** gain something from doing it. That they are usually the first ones to tell you that its not their own selfish need to gain something is beside the point (if not a blatent lie). And it really doesn't matter what the source of this nonsense is, be it unsupported enviro-lunacy, religious craziness, economic wackoism, UFO abduction risks, or what ever else you can name. Its all based on some fringe group coming up with some real, but overblown, or completely made up, risk, then working to convince everyone else to "make changes" to "fix" it.

But yeah, Disney movies are a good example. Tell me why again alligators trying to eat some kids is more socially acceptable than the coincidental inclusion of a famous nude painting in The Rescuers? Wish I still had the originals of those, or Disney would release a, "For non-prudes.", version with original art, including things like original cover art. You know, like the Lion King version that some idiot found the word "sex" in, or the supposed phalic image on the cover of the Little Mermaid.

Sorry Shadowfyr, I didn't understand your reply to my post and so can't respond to it. I was able to get about how generations ago womens' menstrual cycles weren't discussed, and something about Jesus, in the same paragraph.

It has nothing to do with Jesus though; I mean sheesh, Jesus's primary play-mate was a whore. I'm sure he wouldn't have let a little blood get in the way

Except - in Judaism (not Christianity), menstruation is considered - well basically what it actually is. Which is - getting rid of the dirt. A man, being a holy creature, would need to avoid dirt. So in Judaism, a woman and man are not allowed to get cozy while she's menstruating. Of course the fundamentalist christians in their usual "wisdom" took it out of proportion and turned it into some freaky thing, and gave birth to the fetishists. But it has nothing to do with whether or not kids today are being exploited with violence while the natural act of sex is taboo.

On the other hand, the Old Testament was about as graphic a violent fable as anything written since, and in the epic tale, God was downright extreme in his violent cruelty. He wouldn't let two men kiss, but he had no problem stoning those two men to death. He wouldn't let a man -want- his neighbor's wife, but he was fine with flogging the poor guy for the wanting until he had no skin left on his back. If you think about it, this -could- be where all the S&M stuff comes from. The natural need and desire for sex, combined with the righteous punishment of god, and you've got - the holiest of all possible sexual fetishes.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with anything, but since I couldn't understand much of what you were talking about in your posts, I figured I'd ramble a bit.

Its about **modern** reinterpretation of religion, not what is in the Bible, or any other holy book. Your average fundie cherry picks it the same way they cherry pick other people's statements, to support their nutty interpretations of how reality should work. That hating gays is called OK by the *same* passages that list about a dozen other things which they would consider morally reprehensible and illegal doesn't matter, because they only care about the one line about gays. The fact that its full of violence doesn't matter either. I have had them say, straight to my face, that while the murder of jews by Hitler and things like Durfar are wrong, the same things in the Bible are right, because *god* commanded it. That Hitler thought Aryans where gods chosen and blamed jews for undermining them, or that Durfar is a case of racial cleansing, driven by the same, "God wants us to have everything.", mentality doesn't matter. They first will insist that Hitler wasn't a Catholic (or a *true* Catholic, or some variation of that theme), and then insist that Durfar and other similar stuff doesn't count, because well.. its the wrong god...

The can't even get their facts straight about nudity. One group will insist on quoting passages that show a prophet going nude to his people to preach to them (it not being wrong if done in humility) and point out how the there is no case, even back as far as Besthebda (or how ever it was spelled) where the victim, no matter how nude, was ever the one punished for someone else's sexual deviancy. The fundie will just ignore these passages, make up some radical interpretation of some other passage, insist that a thousand years of Catholic prudery (its really quite recent prudery) can't be wrong, well, except for the fact that Catholics are not, according to them, true Christians, then dare you to contradict them.

Fact is, you can't talk about nudity and sex, and our reaction to it, without bringing up the fact that 90% of the people that object to both are people that have a personal Bible they read all the time, but who, as a rule, never read it cover to cover, never read other historical works about the events in it, never read more than one version, and probably have an annotated version, with convenient explanations for why the interpretation rational people have of it is all wrong, and only the wacko one counts. They are precisely the people that will read about god hating gays (but apparently not lesbians, if you interpret the passage literally lol), while insisting that the fact that the same section of the Bible is filled with stuff that would get you arrested in even the most fundie areas, (well, maybe not among the severe nuts...), is all irrelevant today. Not too many of them would let their daughter be sold off to pay their own debts, or stone their son to death for failing to behave them. But hating gay people, that's just fine. They are the ones that will gloss over historical facts about baptism, where you where "required" to be unclothed before god, the passages where his prophets humbly preached to his people in the nude, etc., and insist that nudity was always bad, will always be bad, and they are sure it says so "someplace" in the Bible.

And they are not even the only ones doing that stuff. Ever hear the phrase, "God helps those who help themselves."? Well, its not anything Jesus ever said, and the entire OT is a laundry list of people being helped "only" if they did what god commanded, or for free, just because god felt like it that day. Nothing anyone in it ever gains is achieved by their own hand, and half the stuff that is god gets ****ed off about and floods, blasts down or otherwise destroys in anger at them *daring* to do it without his permission. So, why do probably 90% of the people who believe think that phrase has anything to do with their religion?

Its just symtomatic of the same stuff. If you want nudity to be evil, quote something from the Bible. Want nudity to be good, quote the Bible. Want to murder people that are not like you? Quote the Bible. Want to save people from the evils of war? Quote the Bible. Damn near anything can be justified by just quoting the holy texts. And no one will call you on it, because almost no one that believes actually reads it completely, and everyone else is lying and cherry picking it the same way you are. One of the single most common traits of a crank after all is that it doesn't matter if the other crank is 180 degrees the other way around from your viewpoint (they insist its midnight, you insist its noon, while you are both wrong and its midmorning), just so long as both of you are against those evil heathens that both of you dislike. You can always get around to denoucing each other for being unbelievers and evil "after" you have gotten rid of all the people that insist you are both completely nuts. lol

There was a time, when I was still a little guppy, when it was alright to display your disgust toward homosexuality, and inter-racial relations were considered a form of bestiality.

So you're saying it's wrong to be disgusted with someone's beliefs? There's a LOT of things out there that are very horrible, there's people out there that get off on little kids. Sure, they're not hurting anybody, but is that something I really want to tolerate? No, I gotta draw a line somewhere in my mind that defines what's right and what's wrong.

So you're saying it's wrong to be disgusted with someone's beliefs? There's a LOT of things out there that are very horrible, there's people out there that get off on little kids. Sure, they're not hurting anybody, but is that something I really want to tolerate? No, I gotta draw a line somewhere in my mind that defines what's right and what's wrong.

Interesting, so what should be a proper punishment for someone who claims that he or she fantasizes about little children while masturbating?

That's an interesting point - are we trying to change/influence the internal thought process, or just the manifestations of it? Do we want to "program" a child to never think a violent thought ever, or teach them to restrain violent thoughts and actions when it's inappropriate? Calvin (I like Calvin and Hobbes quotes, ok?) said it well - Do you actually have to BE good, or is it enough to merely ACT good? It's along the lines of whether you should avoid breaking the law just because you might get caught.

Personally I feel that it's only human to have private thoughts and actions that you would never want anyone else to see or know. That doesn't mean it's acceptable or "good" - it's only natural that other people would be angered/upset/disgusted by them and that's probably why you keep them to yourself. I'm sure all of us behave differently in some ways depending on the situation and who we're with. I feel that some thoughts are wrong and disgusting, but I don't think that they should be crushed with an iron fist and purged by the authorities. At the most, I'd stop talking to someone if I found out something about them that I didn't like.

This is interesting. I mean, I'm pretty liberal and tolerant. I believe strongly in fairness and parity. But I'm also a hypocrite. I believe in freedom of religion. For everyone. Except satanists.

Sometimes, our morality is not informed by rational, but rather a gut level, visceral knowledge that something crosses a line.

There are worse things than Satanists. How so? Well, Satanism is made up. Until probably the mid 20th century a lot of people *claimed* such a thing existed, but they where usually pointing at pretty much every non-Christian and insisting they where Satanists. They still pull this BS in some camps, claiming that everyone from Atheists to Unitarians are "really" Satanists, since they don't follow radical dogma. Point of fact, Satanism, as officially recognized (which is to say the made up BS people actually practice) is an odd mix of, "Do what though will", extreme 60's liberalism, a rejection of God as the true anti-Christ, being as in the OT he tends to behave more like a sociapath than a god of justice and love, etc. They are basically nothing more than Christians that have mixed some S&M and stuff. Most of the things attributed to them, like human sacrifices, have nothing to do with their practice. In fact, if you where to write a list of stuff that people believe about them down, I am sure you could find "some" right wing group some place claiming that everyone from Scientologists to Jews is doing the same things (depending on how irrational and fascist the right wing group was). Fact is, if you know anything about Satanism, instead of just falling for the rhetoric used to describe it, its nothing more than an idiotic yuppie version of Catholic ritual, which replaces some of the silly rituals they use with ones more likely to be found in a porn flick.

Frankly, having Pat Robertson for a neighbor would scare me personally far more than living in a city entirely populated by Satanists. Robertson is about 500 times more likely to kill me for not showing proper respect (i.e. kissing its backside via the proxy of kissing Robertson's) fire, brimstone and death to all heathens version of god.

But, as you say. Often our morality isn't entirely rational. One good start though is to make you own informed decisions based on what other people actually believe and do, and not on the second or third hand claims used to demonize them. I am sure, if you looked, you could find lots more people who where not Satanist who killed their kids, either intentionally, or by accident, because they thought they where "possessed", than you are likely to ever find any Satanist in the news doing so (that being pretty much the #1 claim used against them). Sure, they might sacrifice animals, within state allowed limits, but so did Christians for *most* of their history, right up until they replaced that with communion wafers (which most later got rid of as well, probably for being too elaborate and silly). Big deal. Its as silly and stupid as some poser Vampire going to a club and drinking someone's "chi" or what ever those people call it when they bite each other. Its all just a lot of silly nonsense, and frankly, as near as I can tell from what they do believe, most Satanists would fit right in at a church picnic, since its only their "your god is the *false* god, not ours" and "we BBQ little critters" stuff that makes them any different than any other attendant. Hmm. Ok, so its just the "we BBQ little critters" stuff that makes them different, the first one is pretty much standard for all religions that claim there is/are god(s). lol

Simply to claim to embrace evil, just the claim, disturbs me. Every satanist on earth could pick flowers and feed the poor and give all their cash to charity, and their existence would still be repugnant.

In much the same way that someone saying, "I personally don't molest children, but what's the problem if other people want to screw their own children?" would horrify me.

Well, that is just it. They **don't** claim to embrace evil. What they claim is that Satan is the good guy and that god is the one that is evil. That's rather different. And, again, its the other side that is insisting that everyone that isn't one of them is "choosing evil, instead of the lord". Or have you missed all the talking heads in this recent election run up that are babbling that BS? lol To them, not being on their side automatically means you are picking evil's side.

For that matter, if you want to get technical, Satan "wasn't" evil until a) they needed something appropriately bad to cast pagans as, so invented the whole horns and a tail version, recasting the pagan god Pan as Satan and b) some other wacko figured that wasn't good enough, and made up the whole story about a war against god, to give them a reason to claim he was evil, and not just going around testing people's faith "for" god, like he did in the OT. Some, and I mean Christians, flat out refuse to accept that the OT and NT gods are even the same god. The OT version is a selfish, egotistical madman, who arbitrarilly uplifted or killed people he didn't happen to like that week. Without "Revelations", which is real easilly to argue as nothing but an extension of the demonization of pagans and a way to scare people to faith, the two are night and day. One about endless tribal war, other other peace, even with your enemies. Yeah, can't imagine *why* Satanists would claim, as part of their official views, that the god everyone else follows is evil. lol

That's an interesting point - are we trying to change/influence the internal thought process, or just the manifestations of it? Do we want to "program" a child to never think a violent thought ever, or teach them to restrain violent thoughts and actions when it's inappropriate? Calvin (I like Calvin and Hobbes quotes, ok?) said it well - Do you actually have to BE good, or is it enough to merely ACT good? It's along the lines of whether you should avoid breaking the law just because you might get caught.

But how do you know what is good, and what is evil? Not to mention that good and evil might not exist.

Well back on topic... Shadowfyr and others have actually made a number of good points for letting children 'see' naked people and the like in muds. But what would happen if any MU*(s) went out on a limb and did this, I mean scaled down violence and scale up nudity without changing an age limit. Think about it depending on the size and popularity of that MU* the news would be out in weeks or a month at most, then what? Would he very same minority that Shadowfyr argues so passionately against not rise up and denounce that MU*- Maybe all of Mudding society as a bunch of pedophiles? And damn it if the world listened to them before it'll probably listen to them again- What would happen to Mudding then.
Its all very well discussing it and I'm completely convinced that showing a 10 year old ANY couple having sex is far better than showing the same child ANY 10 people being massacred, but what can we do? Even if the whole mudding community stood up a said that if violence is acceptable to show to children then so is sex would just mean serious damage to the whole mudding community.
So would acting on this discussion actually change things for the better?
I think no, you've got to pick your battles and this one looks far to daunting at the moment.

A child doesn't need to be taught that violence = pain. He only need observe it once, and he knows. Sex = potential for serious consequences is not readily observable...

That is true; and it's precisely the reason why children need to be exposed to realistic portrayals of sex and its consequences as much as possible.

You really only have to look at the difference between a country like Britain and a country like the Netherlands. Here in Britain we are incredibly uptight about sex, almost as bad as the US; consequently Britain has one of the worst teenage pregnancy rates in the developed world, and the US is worse still.

In Holland the rate of teenage pregancy rate is barely a third of what it is in Britain. And it's certainly not because Dutch children are shielded from the evils of sex. On the contrary, the Dutch take sex education very seriously indeed. Children are taught about the realities of sex over and over and over again until it becomes no more fascinating and mysterious than any other aspect of everyday life.

The consequence is that Dutch teenagers start having sex later, and rates of pregancy and STDs are far lower.

It isn't just a lack of knowledge that is dangerous. Children and teenagers are inevitably fascinated by things that are forbidden. Put a child in a room full of toys and say "you can play with any toy you like except that one" and the one forbidden toy will be the only one that holds the slightest interest as soon as your back is turned. If a child has no access to nudity, he'll find a way; children have been playing doctors and nurses for as long there have been doctors and nurses. I was never interested in that as a child because my family were naturists and so I had absolutely no curiosity at all about the naked body: I'd already seen thousands. And thousands of real bodies doing real things too - walking, chatting, swimming - not the odd, half-idealised, half-brutalised images one finds in magazines.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shadowfyr

Point of fact, Satanism, as officially recognized (which is to say the made up BS people actually practice) is an odd mix of, "Do what though will", extreme 60's liberalism, a rejection of God as the true anti-Christ, being as in the OT he tends to behave more like a sociapath than a god of justice and love, etc. They are basically nothing more than Christians that have mixed some S&M and stuff.

"As officially recognised" surely means "The Official Church of Satan", as established by Anton LaVey. They have a website, naturally:

But I don't really recognise the Official Church of Satan from your description. It isn't really a religion at all, in the conventional sense, in that there is no underlying belief in supernatural phenomena; instead it is a conscious attempt to adopt all of the ceremonies and trappings of a religion for non-religious purposes. In a way it's a worship of humanity. The philosophy is based on the notion that nearly all conventional religions ultimately come down to suppressing and mortifying instinctive desires and behaviour i.e. the goal is to make people as miserable as possible and ban anything fun. But most religions have some kind of opposition deity (Satan in the Christian religion) who espouses the idea of self-gratification. So LaVey's version of "Satanism" is all about doing what you actually want to do and what actually makes you happy rather than trying to deny your true nature. And the ceremonies have the form of religion but the goal of them is rooted in LaVey's somewhat unconventional take on Psychology.

Quote:

Originally Posted by mithras

So would acting on this discussion actually change things for the better?
I think no, you've got to pick your battles and this one looks far to daunting at the moment.

Then again, what would have happened if no one had ever taken a stand against Senator Joe McCarthy because they were too frightened of the consequences?

Interesting, so what should be a proper punishment for someone who claims that he or she fantasizes about little children while masturbating?

I never said anybody has to be punished. It's not my job to sort out punishments in life.

I just said I had to draw a line in my mind that defines what's right and what's wrong, and to me personally, grown adults having sexual fantasies about little children is wrong. Maybe that's just me, but those are my beliefs.

But how do you know what is good, and what is evil? Not to mention that good and evil might not exist.

A question once asked by Socrates in ancient times too. Is a thing good because the gods say so, or because it is? And if it is good anyway, based on your own observation of the world, then why do you need gods? But, if its only good because they say so, then its wholly arbitrary, since in principle they could change their minds at any time. Kind of a chicken and the egg issue. lol They had him kill himself using hemlock, using a logic trap which basically placed him, in the position of denying everything he said, while refusing to take it, or taking it, and standing up for everything he said... He, unfortunately for his health, had a habit of pulling the rug out from under people's feet in such a way that they where upside down and facing the wrong direction when done, with no means to give a self consistent and rational response that didn't undermine their own assertions. Modern unthinkers are mostly immune to this tactic, since they just insist they where always facing that direction and liked standing on their head, then repeating the same silly assertions all over again, as though you never said anything at all. Its... both fascinating and disturbing to see.

So would acting on this discussion actually change things for the better?
I think no, you've got to pick your battles and this one looks far to daunting at the moment.

1. Depends.. Its possible to make "small" strides and gain ground, since the number of wackos is small. However, you could run into the BS nonsense you get with video games. AO games are rarely made because, "No one buys them". only **they are rarely made, so there are few good ones to buy**. Not a huge problem, except that those small groups have a lot of people in power right now (they have been pushing to get them in since long before the 1950s, when the whole BS about nuclear families got shoved onto the TV), so because those games are "interactive" they get an AO rating for content that, if it was in a movie, would be NC-17.

2. We have been "picking our battles" all along, at least as a nation. Some have fought hard against the downward spiral, unlike the silent majority, but most of the time its not been the game maker who just wants to add realism to a game or big companies that wants to kiss the ass of everyone, so they can maybe get a few thousand more copies sold. No, the people choosing to fight this trend have often been ones like Rockstar Games, which none of us, if we had the guts ourselves to do something, would want on *leading* side. Not because they are wrong per say, though they kind of do go overboard, but simply because, when the game industry is in the Elvis stage, and lots of morons are calling it devil games (just like they called rock devil music), you don't intentionally dig up a Marilon Manson look alike to represent your concerns.

The problem is, if *you* don't pick the fight, then who will? Well... They will, they have been picking the same fight since the days when a women showing her ankles at the beach was pornographic and punishable by law in some places. They have mostly been losing, because society as a whole has moved away from their idiocies. But we have lost out courage. We would rather, "wait until its the right time to do something", and blog about it, than go out in the real world and do the equivalent of burning bras. They however never have, and never will, stop fighting the battles we won't, with 180 degree opposite goal in mind from what we think is reasonable. You don't win a war by retreating from every battle. And make no mistake, these people and their thinking, has been with us for centuries, and while the battle lines have shifted, they have *never* once stopped long enough to smell a flower or look at a painting, without, in the back of their minds, thinking of some way they might use the existence of flowers or the content of the painting to wage war on people who don't believe as they do.

We are very tolerant, even those of us that are also strident and loud about our opinions. They **literally** think that tolerance means, "We won't actually make it illegal for you to think that we are wrong, but if you don't **act** like you agree with us 100%, you are not being tolerant of us, and we will cry persecution." How is, "picking your battles", going to do anything? They are already lobbing grenades at the wall, and you want us to what, pick a wall that has fewer holes in it? Forgive me if, while I do agree taking the extreme path to fighting the battle is not a good thing, that doing nothing, because they *might* personally take notice of you, instead of attacking the fools that are fighting, is an unsound and dangerously stupid tactical choice when *they* are the ones picking the battles and the battle fields.

I just said I had to draw a line in my mind that defines what's right and what's wrong, and to me personally, grown adults having sexual fantasies about little children is wrong. Maybe that's just me, but those are my beliefs.

Have you never in your life had a sexual fantasy about a person who was not actually attracted to you and would therefore have been distressed by you making real sexual advances towards her? Surely that is also "wrong"? If you have had such a fantasy, but chose not to act on it, should we treat you in the same way as we would treat a rapist purely because you have had those thoughts?

In Holland the rate of teenage pregancy rate is barely a third of what it is in Britain. And it's certainly not because Dutch children are shielded from the evils of sex. On the contrary, the Dutch take sex education very seriously indeed. Children are taught about the realities of sex over and over and over again until it becomes no more fascinating and mysterious than any other aspect of everyday life.

The consequence is that Dutch teenagers start having sex later, and rates of pregancy and STDs are far lower.

2/3rd of the teenage pregnancies in Holland are from non western immigrants, who make up about 10% of the population, so teenage pregnancy rates of the natives are more than ten times lower, so I don't think culture is the only explanation, especially when a small group can boost the statistics with more than 50%.

As a side note, just like genes - religions are subject to environmental pressure and selection as well - hence it's logical (to me at least) that religions must have an evolutionary advantage that warrants their existence. While it's easy to bash religion just for the sake of bashing them, there must be more to it than meets the eye.